Monday, November 14, 2011

Gluon and KDE Mobile talks again

Hey there again :-)

Luckily enough, I have been busy recently with a couple of conferences and meetups, like Gluon sprint, Qt Developer Days, Fruct10 conference and Qt MeetUp in Helsinki. I have a lot to report about since all of them were new and amazing experiences in my life that I could never really forget. Cozy environment, friendly people, interesting technical discussions and the like :)

Gluon Sprint

The event took place in Munich at the Nokia premises, the weekend before the Qt Developer Days. It was very fruitful from the technical point of view, so as it a very good occasion for having fun face to face with other Gluon volunteers.

I am not sure where to start since there were so much happenings :) First of all, we had a company booth there with my current employer, called Symbio. This is a subcontractor company located in many countries all over the world. We had a lot of preparation for the event beforehand, like designing our own T-Shirts and providing demos for the volunteers, bringing rollups and variety of marketing materials.

A lot of interesting discussions from many points of view. I was able to get to know new people in the Qt world, which was already pretty awesome. Moreover, it was also a good occasion to meet old friends and buddies.

I was also able participate to the Qt Contributor Day to talk about and listen to Android and Qt, KDE and Qt discussions along with other interesting talks, such as inqlude.

As for me, it has been pretty impressive to see the stage of the Qt development opportunities on Android. I have seen some demos invoking OpenGL in the background, and .. let me just say a really loud "awesome"! ;)

I must admit: we were very lucky because we got an N9 for free without any loan contracts. Hence, pretty much for personal usage as well. I am really grateful for getting this amazing phone. Big kudos to Quim Gil and Nokia!

The event took place in Tampere, Finland. I participated in the event on the ninth and tenth of November 2011. The program consisted of lectures provided by invited industrial and academic experts, community presentations selected from the open call and demos on MeeGo and other Mobile Linux systems given by the regional groups, invited FRUCT teams and selected from the open call. I am really thankful for the organizers and decision makers for giving me the opportunity to talk about one of my favorite ongoing leisure projects: Gluon (Gaming Freedom). All my respect goes to the organizers, too. I am really happy about their support for such brilliant events as this. You can find the detailed program for the event at the following link: http://www.fruct.org/conference10

I could present our vision, current project state and future plans. Thanks for the participants and the questions. I was really impressed with the feedback. Thank for you guys again for making it a success together. :)

I am also really grateful about Knut Yrwin's constructive feedback. I learned a lot from him, like I should look over the audience more, I should take a bit more breath during the talk for audience to let them think a bit more. Of course, I should also decrease my arm work during my presentations to not get the attention of the audience for my arms. :) Sounds funny, but I knew that from Knut Yrwin: these points make a whole lot of quality change into your talk. You just need to practice it in advance, if you are not mature yet with these practicalities.

Talk about Gaming Freedom (Gluon)

Fruct10 conference social event

We had a social event on Thursday evening 19:00-22:00 where various people were able to present their projects. I had taken the opportunity and then was presenting Gluon. It has really been a good occasion because I was even able to get a large TV for presenting the example games we have in Gluon, namely: Invaders and Apocalypse.

The presentation for the demo session had a bit interesting style. It had the Pecha Kucha Presentation Format. If you know nothing about this format, then in a nutshell:
"Pecha Kucha is a presentation technique where a speaker shows a definite number of slides (usually 20 or 15), each for 20 seconds. The slides are changed automatically during the talk."

I must admit I stopped this demo session relatively early and used the time for getting to know new people around.

Gluon demo on the TV

KDE Mobile talk at the local Qt MeetUp in Helsinki

As some of you may already know: we had MeeGo MeetUps in the past in Helsinki. It is a great opportunity for gathering local people with the same interests. As the MeeGo's state is clear, we are now heading to have a Qt MeetUp in Helsinki regularly not depending on MeeGo, Maemo or what matters big companies dictate. We had already one in the past in a pub close to Nokia, but it has been more like an adhoc meeting without too much organization. As for a start, it has already been excellent!

This time, we had a well-organized event with our sponsor. There were interesting technical talks, including me about KDE Mobile, but also about Software Abstraction and so on. Nevertheless, we had free drinks, chips, snack and everything. :) You can find the page of the meetup here:http://www.meetup.com/QtEverywhere/Helsinki-FI/289971/

As usual: I am really sorry for the long blog entries. I should blog more frequently with smaller entries. I will shortly come back about the "KDE Mobile on Harmattan sprint" results and feelings. Please do keep tunned! ;)